The New York Times and The Washington Post each received three Pulitzer Prizes on Monday for a wide range of journalism that spanned conflicts and injustices around the world, including the plight of migrant child workers in the American Midwest, the deadly consequences of war in the Midwest and Middle East and the brutal repression of dissent in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
The public service award, considered the most prestigious of the Pulitzers, went to ProPublica for exposing a web of questionable financial entanglements involving Justice Clarence Thomas of the United States Supreme Court. The series, which revealed that Justice Thomas failed to disclose lavish gifts he had received from wealthy supporters, led the court to issue a new code of ethical conduct.
The investigative award went to Hannah Dreier of The Times, for an exposé of migrant child labor in the modern United States and the government failures and disregard that have allowed the illegal practice to persist. This was the second Pulitzer awarded to Ms. Dreier, who won the 2019 writing prize for her coverage of the MS-13 crime gang for ProPublica.
The Times received the international reporting award for its coverage of the war in the Middle East. The newspaper’s foreign staff produced a series of stories covering the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, the mistakes of the Israeli defense forces that left its citizens vulnerable, and the consequences for Palestinian civilians of the subsequent Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
The Pulitzer Board also issued a special citation for journalists covering the conflict, noting that “under horrific conditions, an extraordinary number of journalists have died in the effort to tell the stories of Palestinians and others in Gaza.” The quote comes at a time when Middle East reporting by many media outlets, including The Times, has become a focus of criticism from activists on all sides of the conflict.
The Washington Post shared the national reporting award for “Terror on Repetition,” an analysis of the AR-15 rifle, a widely available weapon commonly used in deadly killings that is capable of firing hundreds of bullets in rapid succession. The Post described how the rifle had “given attackers the power to instantly turn Americans’ everyday gathering places into zones of horrific violence.”
Reuters was the other winner in national reporting, for its examination of troubling practices at workplaces controlled by Elon Musk, the billionaire businessman, including the rocket company SpaceX and Tesla, the electric car manufacturer.
The Post was also recognized twice for its opinion journalism. The commentary award went to Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian activist and journalist who had contributed columns from a cell in Russia, where he has been detained by President Vladimir V. Putin’s government. The Post’s David E. Hoffman won the editorial writing award for a series about authoritarians’ use of digital technology to crush dissent.
The New York Times Magazine received a feature writing award for “The Mother Who Changed: A Story of Dementia,” by Katie Engelhart, a portrait of how two sisters overcame their mother’s Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis. The article addressed thorny questions about medical ethics and how to compassionately care for loved ones in the grips of mental decline.
The New Yorker received two awards. Staff writer Sarah Stillman was recognized in the explanatory reporting category for her analysis of felony murder, a legal doctrine that often leads to draconian consequences for black and young Americans. Contributor Medar de la Cruz won the illustrated reportage award for a visual story set at the Rikers Island prison complex in New York City. The story, which was based on the author’s experience as a prison librarian, was the first article he submitted to the magazine.
Justin Chang, who joined The New Yorker this year, received the critics award for film reviews written at his former employer, The Los Angeles Times. Greg Tate, a writer who died in 2021 and whose influential criticism and essays on hip-hop helped establish the genre as a high art form, received a special mention.
Since 1917, the Pulitzer Prizes have been awarded annually by Columbia University for excellence in journalism and literature. In its presentation Monday, the Pulitzer board acknowledged the ongoing turmoil in the news industry that has led to thousands of job losses and raised existential questions about the industry’s sustainability.
A nonprofit journalism organization, the Chicago-based Invisible Institute, received two awards. She won the local reporting award for an investigation into missing black girls and women in Chicago. The award for audio reporting went to the Invisible Institute and USG Audio for a series about a hate crime in Chicago in the 1990s.
Two major news agencies received photography awards. The Associated Press was recognized for images of migrants traveling from Colombia to the southern border of the United States. Reuters won for the photographs it produced, within the deadline, of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and the first weeks of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
Lookout Santa Cruz, a digital-only startup in California that aims to eliminate so-called news deserts in communities where traditional media outlets have closed, won the breaking news award for coverage of damaging floods and landslides. in the region.
At the Arts and Letters Awards, the Pulitzer board recognized several works that address the black experience in America.
“King: A Life,” a biography of Martin Luther King Jr. by Jonathan Eig, shared the biography award with Ilyon Woo’s “Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey From Slavery to Freedom,” a slave narrative who escaped Georgia in 1848 and became the leading abolitionists in the North. The history prize went to Jacqueline Jones for “No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era.”
The Middle East conflict figured in the general nonfiction prize, which went to “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy,” by Nathan Thrall, which describes a Palestinian father in the West Bank whose son little one dies. in a school bus accident.
A saxophone concerto by Tyshawn Sorey won the music award. “Night Watch,” a novel by Jayne Anne Phillips set after the Civil War, won in fiction. “Primary Trust,” a play by Eboni Booth, won the drama award. And the memoir prize was awarded to Cristina Rivera Garza for “Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice,” an account of the murder of the author’s sister.